They accompany The Lunar Triumph, a new historical page that follows the programme from the first test rockets on the Sprodj range to the landing in the crater Hipparchus, the expedition to Ptolemaeus and the perilous return to Earth.
The photographic record is fragmentary. The crew came home; most of their film did not. The 1952 technical report records heavily fogged film on the return, considers two causes: cosmic radiation or interference from the rocket’s electromagnetic installations. The conclusion: cause undetermined. Some twelve damaged frames survive at Sprodj. Six of them are shown here.
Alongside the archive, the Astronautical Section at Sprodj has prepared a set of visualisations and interactive reconstructions. Readers can turn the rocket, nearly 75 metres tall, and the Moon tank in three dimensions, find the landing site in Hipparchus, follow the path of the asteroid Adonis, and rerun Professor Calculus's oxygen sum. After Colonel Jorgen's sabotage, that sum decided the final hours of the mission. A concordance places each entry of the mission logbook alongside the matching page of Hergé's adaptation.
Together, the documents and reconstructions make up the most detailed account of the events of 3 to 9 June 1952 the Consulate has published, an undertaking Syldavians remember simply as the Lunar Triumph.
